Page:William Z. Foster, James P. Cannon and Earl Browder - Trade Unions in America.djvu/33

 aries kept their tight grip upon the treasury of the union by drastic expulsions, discriminations, and "re-organizations" thruout the country, culminating in the Boston convention, May, 1924, which spent nine of its ten days exorcising the Communists by means of a reactionary majority built up from appointed delegates, delegates from "newly organized" locals, etc. The left wing was checked in its outward manifestations of power, but in its deep, quiet, intensive work among the rank and file it was tremendously strengthened, so that today the left wing in the I. L. G. W. U. is so firmly rooted and well organized that it is a permanent factor in the life of the union.

It was in the course of this struggle, in August, 1923, that an attempt was made upon the life of William Z. Foster. Three shots were fired at him by a gunman, while he was on the platform speaking to a mass meeting in Ashland Auditorium, Chicago, held in protest against the expulsion of left-wingers.

From the garment industry, the game of expulsion against the left wing spread to other unions, until today there are expelled militants battling for re-admittance to the unions in almost every industry, particularly among the miners, machinists, carpenters, and in the city central bodies.

The official sanction to expulsion as the reactionaries' chief weapon to silence the left wing was given in the dramatic expulsion of Bill Dunne from the Portland convention of the A. F. of L., 1923, which was approved by Sam Gompers and engineered by his successor, William Green. Dunne's speech on that occasion, circulated by the T. U. E. L. thruout the labor movement in more than a hundred thousand copies, has become the classic indictment of the trade union bureaucrats.

Undoubtedly the most bitter and deep-going struggle during the whole second period of the left wing development has been in the United Mine Workers' Union. This